Flexicurity: Unlocking the True Potential of Power Market Players in the European Smart Grid Era (White paper)

TL;DR

This white paper explores how energy assets can contribute to grid stability and efficiency in the European smart grid era by analyzing their flexibility and security capabilities within a flexicurity framework, aiming for a resilient 2050 power system.

Contribution

It provides a holistic analysis of energy asset flexibility and security, introducing the concept of flexicurity for market operation and asset integration in smart grids.

Findings

Categorized and qualitatively graded energy assets' flexibility and security capabilities.

Introduced the concept of flexicurity in power market operations.

Outlined asset integration routes towards a resilient 2050 grid.

Abstract

As the "smart grid" paradigm becomes more prevalent, fundamental techno-economic challenges prominently arise. The variability of renewables may require conventional generators to remain active and operate inefficiently. The grid's inertia grows weaker, jeopardizing its stability. Network-related problems become more prevalent, threatening the grid's security. Finally, the industry experiences price cannibalization to extensive degrees, with frequent negative prices and with renewable energy producers downregulating their production in order to avoid severe penalties. To this day, no previous work has provided a holistic analysis on how each energy asset could contribute to grid management within the power market setting. This paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the "flexicurity" potential of energy assets, in the context of smart grids and the so-called "2050 strategy". More light is cast on their true value, thus better guiding network operators and market players. To the above, we categorize all flexibility and security capabilities of each energy asset, qualitatively grade their "performance". We secondly introduce the concept of "flexicurity" and discuss a gradual shift towards an alternative flexicurity-based market operation. Considering desired state of the European power grid by 2050, we finally provide a flexicurity-based overview of possible asset integration routes.